Chapter II: Preface: To Third Edition (1)

The first edition appeared in 1964, the second in 1967, and a reprint in 1968. In the present edition front matter has been re-styled, printed matter has been altered on the inside and outside of the covers, a footnote added to page 104, and a less bulky paper used.

Of Indians, Spaniards, and Americans

_by_ Paige W. Christiansen

In the world of the twentieth century with its tumultuous ovation for each discovery of science, with its language of non-Euclidian space, with new heroes who leave the earth, not discover it—sometimes it is refreshing to look back on other days, to see other heroes, and to seek romance and excitement which was equally spectacular in times past. Yet there is a close affinity and a spiritual link among the heroes of the past, the present, and the future, and the reaction of their contemporaries to their feats of glory is not so different. Heroes are those who seek the unknown, who risk life and position to expand the frontiers of man’s universe and mind. But heroes can only lead an age, never surpass it. History, then, is people and their catalyst, ideas.

The history of New Mexico, like twentieth century science, is multi-dimensional. Its complex cultural patterns fit with the intricate variety of its geologic wonders and its flora and fauna. In reality, New Mexico is a part of a broader concept, the Southwest. This vast region, which includes western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, southern California, part of southern Colorado, and southern Utah, has given rise to some of man’s greatest achievements. Here prehistoric man rose above his animal heritage to take control of these lands. Here, also, many millennia later, man achieved one of his greatest scientific wonders, the successful release of atomic energy. The story of the years between these events, so far separated in time, is a wondrous tale.

INDIAN BEGINNINGS

Before the coming of the white man, this land belonged to nature’s children, the Indian. Centuries before European nations came into existence, peoples from Asia, crossing by the Bering waters, had discovered, explored, and settled the American continents from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. They mastered the plains, the northern forests, the jungles of Central and South America, and the arid regions. In the deserts and mountains of the Southwest, they conquered elements and terrain, first to survive and then slowly to ascend the ladder of culture.

At first they were foragers, living on what nature provided. At the time of Christ, several groups could be distinguished: In the Colorado River drainage, south of the Grand Canyon, were the Yuman Foragers; in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico were the Mogollon people; in the Four Corners area (where the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet) and in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico was a complex of cave sites that evidenced a forager type of culture. But, as man always aspires to rise above his environment, the Indian slowly and painfully learned to make tools, developed new techniques, and finally made the great step upward; he domesticated plants. Agriculture, based primarily on the growing of corn, came to the Four Corners before the Christian era. Gradually, out of the primitive foragers, there developed across the Southwest a complex pattern of agricultural societies; peaceful farmers intent upon harvesting the utmost from a harsh land. In Arizona, the Hohokam peoples created a culture based upon irrigation. In the valleys of the upper Gila and Mimbres rivers of southwestern New Mexico, several branches of the Mogollon culture grew and prospered. In the Four Corners area and in the upper Rio Grande Valley, the Mesa Verde, the Gran Chaco, and later the Rio Grande branches developed, at first in the cliffs of the high country, then in open villages along the main tributaries of the Rio Grande. That there were numerous and varied cultures is attested to by the ruins one finds scattered throughout the Southwest. Along now dry arroyos, on buttes overlooking rivers or dry river beds, among cliffs in the mountain fastnesses and in caves wherever they appear, there are thousands of sites whose people and history are lost in antiquity.

And these people were builders. They lived in caves at first, then in crude pit houses. Finally they moved above the ground and evolved building techniques and styles of architecture that stood the ravages of time and still serve the people of the Southwest. In the city of Santa Fe, the Palace of the Governors was built upon the ruins of an Indian pueblo (village), the name of which has disappeared even from tradition, and its massive walls of puddled adobe, laid down before the art of making bricks was introduced by the Spanish, may be seen under glass in some of the rooms of the Palace at the present time. Perhaps most spectacular are the great houses of Chaco Canyon, some of which must have sheltered from one to two thousand people each, and which as achievements in building, both from the standpoint of durability and graceful construction, rival the structures of the historic valleys and plateaus of the ancient eastern world.

In addition to agriculture and building, the Indian of the Southwest achieved great heights in artistic forms. The ceramics of the American Southwest become increasingly important when compared with products of the Old World. The Indians of America and the Southwest are a race of artists. Their aesthetic culture towers above anything achieved by the white man, with the general exception of ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy.

As impressive as his achievements in domesticating plants, in building massive structures, and in developing symbolism and aesthetic values to match his material advances, the Indian’s greatest heights were reached in his philosophy on nature and life. He conceived himself to be, not master of creation, but a single factor in the scheme of things. He shared with all things—beasts, birds, rocks, trees, everything in nature—a life principle which permeated all, a gift conferred by the mighty powers of earth and sky. He observed orderly procession of natural phenomena and ordered his own life in harmony therewith. His was no egocentric point of view which has become so much a part of the philosophic base of the European mentality. His natural philosophy entered into every facet of his life—his daily work, his art, his ceramics, his religion. In short, this singularly fine outlook upon the world helps to account for his success in conquering the diverse elements of earth and sky which constantly threatened his very existence.

But this fine culture did not survive in the fullness of its bloom. What eventually destroyed the vast and complicated agricultural system was not the rigors of Mother Nature but a migration of new people into the flow of Southwest history. Sometime after 1000 A.D., a nonfarming, nomadic, warlike people entered the Southwest. The peaceful farmers, weakened by drouth, were unable to cope with this new force. Gradually they fell back, leaving behind their homes, their fields, their culture. By 1300, only a small remnant remained, that located in the Rio Grande Valley of north-central New Mexico. Across the rest of the Southwest the nomadic tribes, technically called _Athapascan_ from their linguistic affiliation but better known by their modern name, _Apache_, had replaced the farming cultures. The picturesque Indian pueblos we see today in the valleys of northern New Mexico are the direct descendants of the great cultures that existed at Mesa Verde, Gran Chaco, Frijoles, and other centers of cultural achievement.

The Indians of the Rio Grande Valley and the Apache who controlled most of the Southwest managed an uneasy coexistence. The Pueblo Indians remained basically farmers, holding fast to the cultural advances made by their ancestors during the millennium preceding 1300. The Apache, for the most part, remained nomadic predators, living off nature’s bounty, or better still, raiding the pueblos for food. The Apache groups began to take on names and traditional areas which they called their own. In northern New Mexico were the Jicarilla Apache and in the southeast, the Lipan, the Mescalero, and the Natage Apache. In northeastern Arizona were the Navajo and in the drainage of the Gila River, the Chiricahua, the Gila, and other groups of the Western Apache. Each of these groups made its mark upon the face of the land.

SPANISH CONTRIBUTIONS

This was the situation in the Southwest when the sixteenth century opened, but a new force was abroad which would grow and strengthen and leave a deep imprint on New Mexico. Beginning on the wild islands of the Caribbean and then fanning out into the heart of Mexico and the South American continent, this new force spread across the face of America. Europeans, more exactly, Spaniards, came bent upon conquest for its own reward, for the glory of God, and for gold. These sturdy men from the Iberian peninsula with weapons vastly superior to the Indians’, with the horse which made them highly mobile and devastating in battle, and with tactics and precision in warfare unknown among the Indians, were to sweep without serious setback across the great cultures of Mexico and Central and South America. By 1540, they were ready to take their next leap forward.

On the west coast of Mexico, at a place called Culiacan, a colorful host gathered. In their ears rang the words of the legend of the Seven Cities of Cibola, seven golden cities, a legend which had been popular in Spain for many generations. Mexico City had produced wealth, and the Spanish were ready to believe that other fabulous cities existed. One Spaniard had already crossed part of North America and had heard from the Indians tales of the rich cities. His name was Cabeza de Vaca, and the exuberance of his tales fired the imagination of the Spaniards.

The soldiers and adventurers gathering in Mexico, commanded by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, were the first Europeans to organize an expedition to the American Southwest. Leaving from Culiacan in 1540, they went up the west coast of Mexico into modern Arizona, then east into New Mexico. The seven golden cities turned out to be the pueblos around Zuni, New Mexico, and not golden at all. The expedition, although discouraged, marched into the Rio Grande Valley and visited most of the pueblos there. Still they failed to find the treasure they sought. In a final desperate attempt, they explored onto the Great Plains, eventually reaching central Kansas. Broken in spirit and body, they struggled back to the Rio Grande Valley, and then retraced their route to Mexico. In all, the expedition covered a two-year span. A failure? Yes, in terms of wealth and treasure found. Yes, in terms of conquest, for nothing had been conquered. No, in terms of human resources, for the Indians Coronado met were to be the incentive that would bring the Spaniard back to New Mexico. While the Spaniard did seek gold and glory, he also burned with a missionary zeal and sought souls for his deep-running religion, Roman Catholicism.

For fifty-five years after Coronado, interest in New Mexico and the Southwest was spotty. Other things occupied the Spanish—primarily silver discoveries in the central valleys of Mexico. But men did not forget New Mexico and saw there an opportunity for missionary activity and exploitation. Also, other nations of Europe were beginning to take an interest in the North American continent, and New Mexico began to look attractive to the Spanish as a frontier defensive outpost. The frontier line pushed ever northward from central Mexico. By 1595, the Spanish were ready to push a salient into New Mexico.

From among the mining communities of northern Mexico, a force of two hundred colonists was assembled by Don Juan Oñate who had a contract to colonize New Mexico. After countless delays due to politics and supply shortages, the Oñate expedition left Chihuahua in 1598. The route went north across the desert to the Rio Grande near El Paso del Norte (modern Juarez), thence up the Rio Grande into New Mexico. On August 18, 1598, they arrived at San Juan, and there founded the first capital of New Mexico, San Juan de los Caballeros. These lands of the Southwest so long colored by the Indian now received a new imprint, one that would alter the direction and flow of culture and change it from the Indian to the Spanish Southwest.

From San Juan, and later (1610) from Santa Fe, Oñate, his men, and his colonists brought New Mexico under the Spanish yoke. In co-operation with the Franciscan Order, which had been assigned the task of converting the Indian, Oñate supervised the building of missions and mission churches at many of the pueblos of New Mexico. At the same time, Spanish towns developed, the most important being the new capital at Santa Fe. By 1628, New Mexico was solidly in the hands of her new masters.

The period from 1628 to 1680 was one of internal conflict and isolation for New Mexico. It lay far out on the frontier, alone and distant from its source of supplies. It lacked many of the items necessary for frontier life, particularly hardware and clothing. Its population was small, and in constant fear of Indian uprising, and its officials were too weak to act with vigor. Finally, there was a lack of genuine interest on the part of the central authorities. All these problems led to internal conflicts between soldier and colonist; between colonist and Indian; between colonist and official; and, perhaps most bitter of all, between church and state. This latter conflict would erupt time after time, openly, and with bitterness and denunciation from both sides. Governors were excommunicated as heretics; Franciscans were accused of all sorts of crimes and improper behavior. This, plus the other conflicts, gave rise to growing disrespect by the Indians for their European conquerors. The superiority of Christianity was questioned by the Indians as they watched the attacks and counterattacks made by priest and governor. The whole system of Spanish rule seemed a mockery. In 1680, the Indians decided their way was best after all and rose in rebellion.

Led by Po-pé from Taos, the various pueblos banded together in a mighty effort to remove the Spanish from traditional Indian lands. For the first time the pueblos came together, united by a single purpose. There were two exceptions; Isleta, just south of Albuquerque, and the Piro villages farther south (Socorro) remained loyal to the Spanish. Up and down the Rio Grande Valley, the Spaniards fell before the pent-up anger of the Indians. Survivors gathered at Santa Fe, but their water supply was cut, and they were forced to retreat south. At Isleta and later at the Piro villages, they received aid before continuing south to El Paso del Norte. With them went their Indian allies from Isleta and Socorro. It was a total defeat for the Spanish, and the Indian again was master of New Mexico.

But not for long, for at El Paso there gathered a force dedicated to revenge for their comrades who had died before the Indian onslaught. Ably led by Diego de Vargas, this expedition moved into New Mexico in 1692. The Indians, who had achieved such unity for the moment in 1680, were again badly divided. De Vargas, instead of having to subdue an alliance, had only to deal with one pueblo at a time. Very quickly New Mexico was returned to a mission area and frontier military post. The Pueblo Indians became permanently subjected to European domination. Their one and only attempt at unity had, in the final analysis, failed.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, New Mexico was the heart of the Spanish empire in the Southwest. Only in southwestern Arizona, western Texas, and California did the Spanish hold any land other than in the upper Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. During these centuries, this valley complex played out its dual role of mission area and military outpost. Its only connection with the resources and ideas of the world was a long hazardous road that stretched from Santa Fe to Chihuahua City and then south to Mexico City. This was New Mexico’s Royal Road, and over it moved everything needed by soldier, priest, and civilian. The trade was dominated by the merchants of Chihuahua, and New Mexico suffered. The tale of New Mexico during this period was one of poverty, hardship, and warfare. And several vital forces moved across the land.

One of these forces had long been in the Southwest, but latent. The Spanish adopted an Indian word meaning _enemy_ to describe it—Apache! The Spanish brought with them domesticated animals which quickly adapted to conditions of the New World and became available to the Indian. Most important was the horse, at least as far as the Apache was concerned. By the early eighteenth century, the Apache, and other groups on the plains, had adapted to the use of the horse. While dangerous as foot soldiers, the Apache became vastly more dangerous as mounted warriors. Whereas they had been satisfied with minor raids against the pueblos and the Spanish holdings prior to 1700, they exploded on a wave of terrorism during the eighteenth century which very nearly drove the Spanish from the frontier. Late in the century, the conflict between the Apache and the Spanish became increasingly bitter. The history of the Southwest became the history of incessant Indian incursions and Spanish attempts to control the raiders. The missions declined and in many instances gave way entirely to the presidio or fort. In New Mexico the military came to dominate the missionary, and only through the heroic efforts of the meager force at the Presidio of Santa Fe did the Spanish manage to hold New Mexico from total collapse. A poor province became poorer, population declined, both among the Spanish and Indian, and the future looked dark indeed.

Far from New Mexico, other forces were stirring which would have a profound effect on the province and the Southwest. Spain and the Spanish empire were in trouble. Spain had failed to develop the supply capability to keep her colonies alive and was forced to spend her wealth in other areas of Europe. After two and a half centuries, the cumbersome and inefficient colonial administrative machinery was breaking down. While Spain’s star was descending, other European nations were on the move. England, France, Holland, and Russia were contesting with Spain for control of the New World. England and France were digging in on the east coast of North America; Holland was penetrating the islands of the Caribbean, and Russia was pushing down the Pacific Coast from Alaska. The weakness of Spain and the failure of her colonial government, plus help from Napoleon by way of his invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1808, brought about the collapse of the Spanish empire. In America, patriots, inspired by the earlier success of the American Revolution and afire with the ideas of the French Revolution, struck out at the remnants of Spanish rule. By 1825, all the Spanish colonies but the islands of the Caribbean were free and independent nations. New Mexico and the Southwest became part of the Mexican state.

Almost immediately, Mexico, without leaders, without a political heritage to lead it to stability, and torn by power struggles large and small, was plunged into a period of political anarchy and civil war which would last for half a century. The problems and dangers of a far-flung frontier were lost in the din of conflict, and New Mexico became a forgotten province. Its claims as a mission area were so weak as to be almost nonexistent. It was no longer needed as a military outpost, for the danger to Mexico was not external, but internal. Its reasons for being were forgotten, at least for the moment, and New Mexico had to survive on her own initiative. But for one very important fact, the Spanish salient into the Southwest might have collapsed under the weight of poverty and Indian attacks. That fact was the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821, a trail which linked the Spanish world with the Anglo-Saxon world then pushing its frontiers out from Missouri. This trail, so rich in lore and adventure, so much a part of the history of both the American west and the Spanish north, was the door through which passed the characters for the final act in the history of the Southwest.

Before the final act, however, it is vital and necessary to set down the contribution of two hundred fifty years of Spanish occupation and rule. The coming of the Spaniard to the Southwest began a mixture of white and red races which resulted in a new mixed race. The first generation of those who came up from Mexico were Caucasians; their descendants were usually not. They came seeking wealth and security, but there was neither wealth nor security in New Mexico, and they remained poor, very poor. The society that evolved was to be based upon farming and stock raising, and its organization was to be feudal in nature. There would be no education; hence, there could be no intellectual advance. The world began to go ahead of the people of New Mexico. Only in the house of the rico was there any sign of the wealth and grandeur of Spain; everywhere else was poverty. Farming was left in the hands of the Indian, while the Spaniard chose to be a man on horseback, a cattleman, an aristocrat. In the final analysis, Spanish New Mexico would not develop as democratic and agricultural, but aristocratic and feudal. The hacienda was a part of old Spain in exile. The rico tried vainly to hold to his idea of chivalry and to a decorum suitable to his position. But what chance was there in the face of the increasing poverty, the constant danger to life and property, and time that did not move? While individual courage of the upper class remained, discipline and industry died. When the American army marched into the Southwest, the sons of the conquistadores could offer no armed resistance. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the society of the ricos in New Mexico was that it failed to contribute any lasting monument. It left no art, no music, no great highways, no adequate governmental system.

But many elements of Spanish culture were to persist, and these arose from the collective consciousness of the people of New Mexico. Around the great haciendas were small villages with their artisans and workers. It was among these people that the heritage of Spain clung to this land. Many of these towns yet remain and are not much different from those of two hundred years ago. To a large degree, their Spanish culture seems hidden and undiscovered, but the people, their loves and hates, pleasures and hopes, beliefs and fears, are governed by tradition, a tradition that finds its roots deep in the soil of Spain.

Today, when we look at the cultural scene in New Mexico, we can see direct evidence of Spanish occupation. The language of half the people in the state is Spanish, in some areas still the Spanish of the sixteenth century. Roman Catholicism, of which the Spanish were the most Catholic, dominates the religious scene. The Spanish heritage in political attitudes, in building and architecture, and in the legal tradition of the state is apparent. New Mexico, of all the states in the United States, is the only one that can claim a truly Spanish heritage.

ANGLO-AMERICAN VIGOR

While Spain lost its empire and New Mexico and the Southwest sank into poverty and decay, yet another force was on the march, a force that welled up in an Anglo-American people clinging to the Atlantic Coast of North America. As these people developed a nation, they also discovered a sense of destiny which turned their faces to the west and their footsteps toward the sunset. With them moved their culture. At first, it was a trickle, a few traders bent on profit, crossing the plains on the Santa Fe Trail. Then the trickle became a flood. For New Mexico, these men came as saviors. The Missouri traders broke the Chihuahua monopoly and goods from all parts of the world began to flow into New Mexico, resulting in higher standards of living. These Yankee traders, sensing a good thing, also penetrated the markets of Mexico, using New Mexico’s Royal Road to gain entrance.

Again there was conflict, not Spanish and Indian, but Latin and Anglo-American. Mexico owned the lands of the Southwest and intended to keep them. But this American, with his gaze glued on western skies, refused to turn aside, and he strode on, grinding the feeble efforts of Mexican resistance into the desert sands. The Mexican War in 1846, suddenly transferred ownership of Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California from Mexico to the United States. This was nearly half the territory of Mexico. New Mexico, with her already complex cultural pattern, was subjected to still another influence.

The history of the American occupation of the Southwest is as complex and diverse as its predecessors. Its ingredients include cattle, mining, railroads, agriculture, science, and the Indian. All these, and others, combined to give an Anglo-American slant to the Southwest. The Indian culture did not disappear, nor did the Spanish, but rather a new stratum was cast that was to complete the mosaic.

When the American arrived in New Mexico, he found a poor, backward area, hungry for trade and outside contacts. He found the Indians of the Southwest in open rebellion against the white men. The Navajo and other Apache groups, the Comanche, and some of the Pueblos were the primary offenders. This was to be the main problem occupying the time and energy of the American settler and soldier for forty years after 1846. Until the Indian situation was stabilized, there would be little economic and social development.

The method evolved for containing the vicious raids against friendly Indian, Spanish, and American communities was a series of forts placed at strategic passes or trails surrounding the traditional lands of the Apache. The Indian strongholds were located primarily in the mountainous regions of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona. The line of forts stretched along the Rio Grande south of Socorro to the vicinity of Las Cruces, and west along the southern edge of the mountain escarpment into Arizona. Then the defense complex ran north across the desert to an irregular line running east from Flagstaff through Gallup and back to the Rio Grande. These forts were well garrisoned and provisioned and began to carry the fight to the Indian. Early success was halted by the conflict generated by the American Civil War.

The center of the Civil War in the west was in New Mexico. There was conflict, argument, and some small degree of fighting in other western states and territories as settlers from the north or south struggled to carry this territory or that state into the Union or the Confederacy. These were, however, local matters and as much political as military. In New Mexico, there was a war and there were battles, battles which deserve to be a part of the general Civil War story but that are usually forgotten in the smoke and roar of eastern cannon.

Two major battles were fought in New Mexico, the first a Confederate victory, the second a Union victory which saved New Mexico, and the west, for the Union. The aim of the Confederate forces was to capture, intact if possible, the forts in New Mexico and Arizona with their great store of military provisions, provisions badly needed by the Confederate army. Also, there was a feeling among southern leaders that success in New Mexico might also lead to success in California, badly split on the question of secession, and in Colorado, rich in silver and gold. An army recruited in Texas and commanded by General Henry Sibley was sent to accomplish Confederate aims.

This army entered New Mexico along the traditional route, moving up the Rio Grande from El Paso. It quickly subdued the forts and Union troops in southern New Mexico and continued up-river. On February 21, 1862, it met a Union army commanded by Colonel E. R. S. Canby at Valverde, a small community about twenty miles south of Socorro, New Mexico. Kit Carson, New Mexico’s famous trapper and scout, commanded the New Mexico Volunteers, a part of the Union force. Canby’s troops were beaten and dispersed at the Battle of Val Verde, leaving the upper Rio Grande Valley virtually without defense. Within a few weeks, the Texans had taken Albuquerque and Santa Fe. But one stronghold in New Mexico remained in the hands of the Union forces. Fort Union, northeast of Las Vegas, New Mexico, became the focal point of action by both north and south. Sibley, marching from Santa Fe, knew success depended on the fall of Fort Union. The Union forces, equally aware of the importance of the fort, hurriedly reinforced it with a number of volunteers from Colorado.

Within Fort Union, a crisis developed over differing opinions on strategy. The fort commander wanted to keep the garrison at full strength and fight the Confederates from within the fort. The Colorado Volunteers wanted to go out and meet the enemy. The latter won and a Union force moved into the passes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to meet the Confederates in a fateful battle that would decide control of the west. It was fought at Glorieta Pass on March 28, 1862. Despite the fact that the two armies met on this field, the contest was not decided there. Early on the morning of March 28, a force of 400 Colorado Volunteers, commanded by Colonel John M. Chivington, began a flanking action in hopes of hitting the Confederate rear. This group moved out of the Pass into the mountains, and by a very difficult route moved back toward the Pass behind the Confederate force. On a ridge overlooking Apache Canyon, they saw below them the entire Confederate supply train and cavalry horse herd. In a lightning hit-and-run attack, the supply train and horses were destroyed. When word of this reached Sibley at Glorieta Pass, there was little for him to do but to retire from the field. The Confederate force never recovered from this disaster and gradually retreated to Santa Fe, then back down the Rio Grande into Texas.

With the end of the Civil War, New Mexico and the Southwest returned, not to peace, but to war, war against the Apache. It took twenty years for the American with all his modern weapons and tactics to bring the Apache under control. For the Apache, it ended on September 3, 1886, when Geronimo and his few ragged followers surrendered to General Miles in Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. Under the weight of steel and increasing numbers of white men, the Apache was doomed. Though civilization would swallow the Apache, as it has always succeeded against the barbarian, the Apache made a spectacular defense of his lands and his way of life against both Spaniard and American. He made himself master of the desert, and only the gods of science succeeded in overcoming him and his desert gods.

INDUSTRIAL BOOM

With the Indian situation settled, New Mexico underwent a boom in two important areas, mining and cattle raising. These industries, so much a part of the history of the American West, did and still play an important role in the well-being of the Southwest. Mining camps sprang up along the mountain fringes as new discoveries of silver and gold came to light. Around Socorro and Magdalena, in the Mogollon Mountains, at Hillsboro and Kingston in the Black Range, and hundreds of other places in New Mexico and the Southwest, men hungry for quick wealth swarmed over the hills and mountains and built their roaring camps. While miners were tapping the subsurface wealth, cattlemen were staking out their claims to the grasslands, both on the eastern plains and in the high mountain meadows. Cattle empires grew to staggering proportions, sometimes erupting into violent conflict over grazing and water rights, such as the Lincoln County War made famous by the participation of Billy the Kid.

The character of the Southwest still bears the stamp of the miner and the cattleman. Although the cattle and grazing industry has declined, as has the traditional mining camp, the past importance of these activities has had a tremendous impact upon the character of Southwest folklore, law, and music and on the thought of the people.

Other influences affected New Mexico as a result of the American occupation, things inherent in the American culture. Ribbons of steel across a continent, buildings of steel and stone, business and commerce, technology, common law, the English language, the Protestant religion, and, above all, the American-brought driving desire to dominate, to win. Certainly the American had to adapt his culture to the desert lands, but he did it in his own way, not in the way of the Indian or Spaniard. So Anglo-American culture became superimposed upon a Spanish culture that was superimposed upon an Indian culture.

_Disinherited_, that is the word that best describes contemporary New Mexico culture. A stronger race came and took away the inheritance of the Indian, though there did result a blood mixture. Only in superficial matters did the Spanish adopt any of the Indian ways. The Spanish, too, succumbed to a stronger people and have been denied the privilege commonly accorded to conquered peoples, that of mixing their blood with that of the conquerors. One finds today in New Mexico three distinct people—Indian, Spanish, and Anglo-American—as sharply contrasted as the strands in a Navajo blanket. There is pure red alongside white, and only rarely do the colors blend into pinks or grays. This is why we must say that New Mexico is a mosaic, not a synthesis, of many elements, clearly defined.

Across the span of time, great men, people, and ideas have molded New Mexico and Southwest history. Indian, Spanish, American—vital forces that are today working toward a genuinely unique culture in New Mexico. The modern world may well give to the Southwest the idea or catalyst that will blend these elements into a single force. Science, techniques, ideas are things of the present and are for the present to assess and synthesize. The Indian gods of air, earth, and sky and the white man’s gods of morality and science do not differ a great deal in their aspirations for their chosen people, and perhaps they will decree a splendid and unique synthesis from the cultural mosaic. Through understanding comes knowledge; from knowledge, creation.

The Exotic Plants of New Mexico

_by_ Ross Calvin

The problem of discussing plant life becomes complicated, for some of those arriving in New Mexico may be compound microscope botanists, some collectors, others pathologists, still others geneticists. Some will be chemists or mathematicians, some others untrained in the ways of growing things and mainly interested in seeing while they tour. But one thing is fairly certain—most visitors will come from a distance, so it may be useful to invite them to observe what they can readily see on the way hither, which will be a relatively painless method of amassing some information.

Yet the method of arrival itself suggests choices, options, and exercises in probability. Do visitors come in covered wagons, or in jet planes; by bus, car, train, or some other way? The most convenient way, doubtless, is by plane traveling six hundred miles an hour at a height of some thirty thousand feet; but the most rewarding way is by saddle or on foot as the early collectors came.

Since one cannot know his own country well if he knows no other, a visitor from the east arriving at an altitude of five miles will probably be more conscious than others of drastic changes in the landscape when he first looks down on New Mexico. Instead of the universal green of the east, he will note the earth as an unaccustomed tawny, reddish brown expanse, and this will be its common color through most months of the year. He will note the absence of rivers, but the presence of mountains which generally ring the horizon. He will wonder, after traversing the border counties at the western edge of the Great Plains, at the infrequency of plowlands, and will promptly conclude that New Mexico is one vast, bare desert—an impression that will be corrected rapidly when he visits the dark National Forests where the slim, crowded spruces and firs tower skyward.

The visitor from El Paso, as the Chihuahua desert (the name is fairly deserved) slides backward underneath him, will be amazed at the serpentine stripe of vivid verdure below, all completely leveled, and all marked off by geometrical lines and tightly bordered by pale hills where the vegetation is reduced to tiny dots not tall enough to cast a shadow. Still proceeding north, he will presently be above a ninety-mile stretch where the vegetation is so skimpy and the river so closely boxed in by desolate hills that Spanish explorers bestowed on it the sinister name _Jornada del Muerto_—Dead Man’s Journey, which is self-explanatory.

But on the other hand, a visitor descending into New Mexico from the northland in wintertime above this same Rio Grande will traverse a featureless jumble of peaks on which the black coniferous forest no longer shows as black at all but, snow-encased, gleams as white as the naked snowfields themselves. And he will find incredible the immense range of climate spanned in a flight only an hour long.

The jet traveler approaching from the west beholds the greatest, most spectacular panorama of all, the true wasteland of the desert, with vast blocks uplifted from out of earth’s crust, plateaus dissected by giant empty canyons whose walls are seared to utter nudity by ages of the most intense sunshine on our continent. Here the architecture of nature is all designed on a gigantic scale, and the climate exhibits influences of a mighty ocean, of towering mountain chains, and the range of wandering planetary winds which created the desert. From the altitude of a cruising jet, the distances, the speed, the color, and the light are indescribably exhilarating.

Since the traveler arriving from any direction can see for identification only a few species, it will suffice to point out only two of the harbingers of eastern New Mexico, both of which are dominant on that area of the Great Plains: the blue grama grass, which in fall and winter bears the graceful sickle-shaped head, and the small _Yucca glauca_ which cannot be mistaken for anything else.

Along the northern line, the visitor should look for the somber, almost black, forest of spruce and fir with its white patches of aspen on the 10,000-foot slopes. Descending farther southward, even a casual observer will note that these species give way first to the yellow pines, then to the junipers (“cedars”) and dwarf pines or piñons. The visitor arriving from the south will find most conspicuous of all the olive-green creosote bush in its summer-winter foliage, next, the omnipresent mesquite (_Prosopis_), then the various _Opuntia_ cacti (chollas and prickly pears), and the yuccas.

As he comes in from Arizona, the splendid saguaros will beckon him toward the gateway of New Mexico, but they will nowhere enter it themselves. The vase-shaped body of the ocotillo consisting of unbranching, ten-foot wands should be recognized at a glance, as likewise should the various yuccas and agaves. And in early springtime, a low tree with a rounded mass of golden bloom will joyously proclaim its identity as a paloverde.

The desert plants thus enumerated can be recognized along various stretches of U.S. 66 as one holds his speed at a conservative ninety or, even better, at a conservative sixty.

The amateur scientist will need to do some homework before he learns much systematic botany or plant physiology. It takes considerable study to comprehend the slow, age-long process which has resulted in the evolution of all this grotesque vegetation: the interaction of extreme aridity, high temperature, low humidity, high evaporation, infrequent precipitation, the hostility of numerous chemical solutions, and the natural rapacity of the animal population. Each plant must have an adaptation of its own, from the tiny winter annual, which must race through its course from a tender rosette to ripened seed before the searing sunshine arrives, on up through the series to the stoic saguaro, which seems able to scorn nature’s enmity.

A final warning to the air traveler. He should be sure before deplaning that he has observed a _bajada_. It is a must. Bajada is one name, outwash slope is another, alluvial fan is still another. The stewardess should inquire of each student, and if his answer is “no,” she should reply, “Then you’ve just flunked the course.” A bajada is the most characteristic single feature of all in the sloping, stony topography of the desert—and remember that the surface of the desert is regularly sloping and stony. The Spanish word itself means only a down slope, but it has come to have a semitechnical sense—a fan-shaped apron of rocky debris at the foot of a mountain where it has settled out of the summer torrents and there keeps accumulating in successive floods. As the mass builds up, the bigger fragments drop out closest to the parent crag, then the small ones, finally the coarse gravel, and lowest of all on the slope the fine sand. Thus the fragments are graduated in size, in distance traveled, and in the nature of soil resulting. As the fan increases in size and laps up higher and higher on the mountain’s flank, the geologists often describe the result by saying that the mountain “is burying itself under its own debris.” From the air, the lines of drainage will be seen to have assumed the form of a tree with its trunk downward, its branches high in air. But the most interesting aspect of a bajada is the nice proportion which nature works out between the plant species and their location on the curve.

FROM SAGEBRUSH TO SPRUCE TREES

The traveler who has viewed the Southwestern panorama of nature from its sagebrush to its spruce trees has indeed seen most of it. The spruce which grows wild only well up on the higher mountains is familiar to everybody because it has become a favorite in formal planting everywhere. But the sages—who knows them? To the tenderfoot, almost any gray plant is “sage.” To my friends the cowmen, sage means commonly saltbush. To my friends the foresters, sage means an artemisia. But there are romantics to whom “purple sage” is Apache plume, which is a member of the wild rose family.

Some popular education would seem to be desirable. And this applies, too, to the cacti, for there is more misinformation about them than anything else that grows, runs, or creeps—except rattlesnakes. The clever people who design travel folders and pictorial maps almost always put saguaros in New Mexico. But saguaros do not grow in New Mexico. That is final! And the yucca is not a cactus. That also is final. Nor yet the ocotillo—that defiant, splendid denizen of the desert which flaunts the scarlet torch of flowers. The question that is always on the surface as one writes of plant life in the Southwest is, “Who wants to know?” The picnicker wants to know the names—and nothing much besides—of the wild flowers. My friend the cowman already has the names; that is, the common ones. If I chance to mention blue grama grass, he gently corrects me, “black grama.” Then if I mention black grama, he says, “no, white grama.” But at least he is concerned about something more important than nonscientific names. He wants to know if the plant is something that a lean old cow can eat, whether it stays green in winter, and if it will hold the soil in place. The tourist who pilots car and passengers some six hundred miles between breakfast and bedtime asks only what he was looking at. The rest of us who go into the mountains often enough to be impressed by the layer-cake succession of plants on their slopes can, with the aid of some reading, amass a store of knowledge where others amass only mileage. On a tour, it is mileage or knowledge. One has to choose.

Actually, our New Mexico desert is not dominated by sage. That honor is held by the creosote bush, called by some of the old-timers _greasewood_, _Covillea glutinosa_, by some of the scientists—along with five other synonyms. Like the mesquite with which it shares the same general habitat but _does not intermix_, it occupies an immense spread of territory, roughly from Texas to California. Since no livestock will eat it and the ground it occupies is equally useless for agriculture because of aridity and stoniness, creosote is a veritable coyote for survival. The traveler descending from Taos to Santa Fe need not look for it. The sage of that locality, which gives the landscape its singularly mournful aspect, is a true sage. With good reason the cowboys call it _black sage_.

In 1846, Lieutenant Emory, as he rode southward with the Army of the West, first encountered the creosote as he approached Socorro. The northward extension of the plant is at the same point today, and the range of mesquite extends only a few miles farther north. These two remarkable plants are the main markers of the Lower Sonoran Zone. In the same arid, stony, broken country, the traveler will find an abundance of cacti, and these plants are usually supposed to be the most tenacious of all tenacious growing things. Actually, in southwestern Arizona and neighboring parts of California there are whole areas where the aridity is too severe for cacti, but for our state—let it stand. Everybody, of course, has noted the grotesque shape of the plants, but not everybody has noted that the shape was chosen with a canny intelligence. A globe exposes less surface (that is, the vulnerable area for evaporation) than any other solid of equal volume. And a cylinder is second best. Another thing—cacti being succulents are filled with a watery sap or juice which quickly coagulates after a wound and stops the waste of moisture. Furthermore, the plant’s aggressive root system is arranged so as to capture the grounds scanty moisture most quickly and completely after rains.

Cacti of more than sixty species occur within our state, but more than nine tenths of the plants seen along the highway—unless they are brought together for a garden collection—can be grouped into one genus, the _Opuntia_. The family likeness is shown not by the shape or general appearance but by the fact that all are jointed. Both the cane cactus (also called cholla and elkhorn) and the pancaked prickly pear, unlike the big barrel cactus and the numerous small species which resemble it in shape, have joints and may therefore be rightly called opuntias. The “pancakes,” it may be remarked, are not leaves but divisions of the stem. A cactus gets along without leaves. So a good rough-and-ready test is this: if it has leaves, it is not a cactus—which eliminates ocotillo, yucca, agave, sotol, and so on.

The barrel cactus is sure to be seen growing beside service stations in the southern part of the state. Its name as well as its size identifies it. The flowers and the large lemon-shaped fruits are worth a glance. If they do not occur on the south side of the plant, it has been transplanted and turned. The evidence is as trustworthy as the presence of moss on the north side of a tree in the forest.

The barrel cacti, the opuntias, acacias, the ocotillos, along with the creosote and mesquite already mentioned, have a way of growing along together in what is called a plant society. These all belong in the bottom layer of the cake called the Lower Sonoran Zone, which is best seen on the Rio Grande mesas near El Paso.

The layer next above it comprises the foothill country of the Upper Sonoran Zone, which includes most of the state of New Mexico. Some of its common markers are juniper, piñon, oak of various species including live oak, mountain mahogany, mescal, yucca, beargrass, and the famous blue grama grass. It is exhibited all along the Continental Divide in the southwest part of the state but nowhere so well as in the Fort Bayard Reservation. There a tract, protected for three generations from woodcutting, fires, and intensive grazing, offers a large-scale picture of the lovely land that once was New Mexico. There the character and amount of vegetation astounds the visitor who is familiar with only the close-picked, parched aspect of the landscape that generally borders the main highways. When seen from the air, the very color of the grass-mantled earth is many shades lighter than that of the bare overgrazed ranges a few miles to the south. And the difference can be seen by anybody.

The foothills are dotted, not covered, with juniper and piñon. The dwarfed, rounded little junipers (properly enough called cedars) leave the traveler unprepared to believe that they will anywhere become respectable forest trees. Yet in the Burro Mountains, the alligator-bark species, finest of them all, reaches a diameter of five feet and an age of about 1000 years. The wood has an extraordinary fragrance, and its smoke tells the neighbors for blocks around that you are warming yourself at the fireplace. Another notable thing about the wood is its resistance to decay in the earth. I have removed pieces of it from subterranean ruins of the Mimbres culture which, according to the best archaeological opinion, are some eight hundred years old.

The yuccas deserve a story by themselves. One small, unimpressive species greets you on the meadows at the foot of Raton Pass; others have to be searched out along high limestone ridges where the foothills are deciding to become mountains. The one chosen for our state flower is the tall yucca (_Yucca elata_), a superb species best seen along the Continental Divide near Silver City. The genus reaches its greatest size in the grotesque Joshua tree, which never fails to attract the eye on the Mohave desert in California.

The century plant has a name that always gets attention. But let us be sure we mean the same thing. Rightly, it means the mescal, the favorite food of the Mescalero Apaches. Besides these two names, it is called also maguey and, no doubt, Spanish dagger along with various other spine-tipped plants. All of which clinches the argument for a name which for all users is a certain designation for one object and only one. It is not just because botanists like to appear learned that they call this plant _Agave parryi_. That title is as descriptive as middle C for one key on the piano, and in the same way international.

Everyone inquires about the century plant’s life expectancy. An insurance man might make an inference from the name. The plant is a big compact cluster or rosette of rigid, upward-pointing, spadelike leaves, each four or five inches in width and each tipped with a vicious, stout thorn. Year after year the plant just sits there by a boulder, unnoticed. I question whether anything alive on the desert has a better life expectancy. As far as my observations go, it has no diseases. It is invincible to drouth. Freezing does not harm it, and fire cannot burn it—although a yucca even when green will flame up like a torch. No hungry old cow can crop it, and no rodent gnaws it, at least not enough to do harm. And since the Indians have gone on reservations, no human uses it. So it stays there.

In fact, nothing less than a caterpillar can leave a dent on it—not, of course, the caterpillar that eats young tomato plants, but the Caterpillar that pulls heavy road machinery. The plant just does not die before maturity, it would seem. A remarkable organism, indeed! But after many, many years, depending on the amount of moisture it receives, it makes up its mind to flower. In one tremendous effort, it shoots up a twelve-foot flower stalk at the rate of several inches a day. The blossoming is a final, dramatic, beautiful gesture, for by the time the flowers have withered, the great tenacious plant has turned to a ghastly purple and is dead.

On the high slopes where the last yuccas end and only a few junipers remain in the race for survival, the yellow pines come in to mark off what is called the Transition Zone. The pines need no description, no printed promotion. The traveler, any traveler, can appreciate them although he might not be stirred to the slightest interest by the lovely yuccas. Since the beginning of time, the pines, fragrant, cheerful, companionable, have been man’s best friend. Among the ponderosa pines takes place most of the hunting, most of the camping, much of the picnicking. There is no danger that the tourist will overlook the pine belt and the pines for they are probably the most numerous tree in New Mexico.